


Five Times Sherlock Kissed John For Science And One Time John Kissed Him Back

by unicornpoe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Experiments, Fluff, John Is In Love With Tea And Sherlock, Johnlock - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, Might Be Pilot!verse, Mild Angst, Pining John, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson Being Idiots, So Mild You Might Not Even Notice, i have no idea when this takes place, plus one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 01:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13424070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: Sherlock talks John into performing a series of kissing experiments 'for science' and John enjoys them a bit more than he's comfortable with.





	Five Times Sherlock Kissed John For Science And One Time John Kissed Him Back

**Author's Note:**

> I've never done one of these 5 + 1 fics, so I've no idea if I did this right or not. This idea sort of just fell into me head and refused to leave until I'd written it down, so here you go. Unbeta'd, not brit-picked, largely unedited. If you see any horrifying mistakes, don't be afraid to tell me! Thanks so much for reading! Comments much MUCH appreciated. P.S. Special thanks to Brainygiirl for her keen eye!

1.

“Are you going to speak?”

John stares up at his flatmate, who is in turn staring down at him with an expression so intense that John subtly glances down at himself to make sure he isn't on fire.

“I guess that's a no, then,” John says (mostly to himself) when Sherlock neither opens his mouth to speak, nor moves in the slightest. “Look, could you get out of the way at least? I have to be at the clinic at a quarter past and I'm gonna be late if I don't get a move on─come on, Sherlock, it's getting a bit creepy now.” He sets his laptop on the floor beside his chair (he doesn't even remember what he's been trying to look at now. Everything goes a bit funny when you were being pinned under a gaze like that) and cleares his throat.

“John.”

“Yes.”

There's yet more silence. John sighs. Sherlock is standing directly in front of him, effectively trapping him in this bloody chair (the wanker) and the only option seems to be waiting it out and possibly missing his shift, which he can't do, or standing and coming flesh up against Sherlock, which he doesn't _want_ to do. (Well. Maybe _doesn't want to do_ isn't quite the right phrase, but John can't decide what words will match his feelings on that subject─isn't really sure that it's a good idea to─and so he lets it drop.) He opens his mouth to snap again─

“John. I need you to listen to me very carefully, fully through, without interrupting me. Can you do this?” Sherlock asks, swaying forward just slightly on the balls of his feet as he peers down at John.

John raises his eyebrows. “You have─” he glances at his watch─ “five minutes.”

Sherlock nods and clears his throat. A light pink flush dawns faintly on those high cheekbones, and John is suddenly both very interested and very worried. “John,” Sherlock says for the third time. “It has recently come to my attention that several apparent experts of philematology believe that engaging in a kiss reduces blood pressure. However, several others believe that it raises it, and there is yet another, unrelated school of thought that says kissing releases the same chemicals in ones brain that firing a gun does. You can understand, I'm sure, where my confusion lies. You also know how I loathe any and all inconsistencies or untruths. Do you understand?”

John─who is swiftly grateful that he's sitting down, as he'd gone slack-jawed and boneless at the word _kiss_ ─makes a few embarrassing noises until he finally manages to splutter, “I─well... I mean I _understand_ , but... why the hell are you telling me this?”

Sherlock's face loses all of its intensity and becomes carefully expressionless. He folds his long, pale hands, then tears them apart again, then shoves them in his pockets, then lets them hang, twitching, at his sides. “I need to know which one is true. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” John echoes weakly.

“And I need you to... to help me. Obviously.”

“By...” John swallows. (His throat is suddenly filled with sand, he realizes distantly, making words gummy and hoarse.) “By doing what?”

Sherlock sighs and tips his head to the left. He looks at John disdainfully down the bridge of his straight nose. “John. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you do not need me to explain something so obvious to you.” But even though those words contain the man's usual dose of arrogance, John─ridiculously attuned to Sherlock in a way he really doesn't like to ponder too often or too long─doesn't miss the slight hesitancy of breath before and after his flatmate speaks, nor the little crease above the bridge of his nose that appears whenever he's unsure about something.

John shakes his head. And then seems unable to stop shaking it. “You could use anyone else.” He searches wildly in his mind for a name. “Irene,” he blurts, “Or Molly, or... or Mrs. Hudson, or _Greg_ ─”

Sherlock furrows his brow. “Who's Greg? And no, I couldn't use anyone else. I've done my research, John. The test subject needs to be someone of optimal health─which you are, and Mrs. Hudson is not, as she has arthritis─and needs to have no history of hypo- or hypertention anywhere in their family─you don't, Molly does─and needs to _exist_ ─you do, Greg clearly doesn't. All of this makes you the prime test subject.”

 _Test subject..._ “Irene?” John asks weakly, a last-ditch, desperate effort.

“I am not asking The Woman to preform a kissing experiment with me in any universe ever,” Sherlock says flatly. Reasonably. “If it makes you feel any better, I'll be using my revolver, as well.”

John has a brief but vivid vision of Sherlock snogging a revolver before his mind clicks into gear and he remembers the bit about shooting things. He shakes his head once more, hard, hoping to clear it a bit, and glances at his watch, praying─

_Thank god._

“Gotta go,” he mumbles, kicking Sherlock unabashedly in the shins to get him to move away from the chair (he does so, stumbling slightly, and because John refuses to look at his face, he misses the look of hurt that briefly flashes across it) and hoisting himself up and across the room in less than ten seconds. He grabs his coat and slips into it. “Clinic,” he says, staring firmly at his shoes. “We'll talk when I get home.”

And then he runs.

John is a mess all day at the clinic. As he sits through patient after patient complaining of things as varied and as boring as sore throats and headaches and sprained ankles, his mind point-blank refuses to quit it's wandering. That in and of itself wouldn't be half as bad if his mind wasn't wandering to a place that seemed overly full of things to do with Sherlock and kissing. John drops tongue depressors, he misspells patients names on forms, he sits and has coffee in the wrong office for fifteen minutes until finally─ _finally_ ─his shift is over.

He is racing back to Baker Street as fast as he had left it that morning, and he's still no closer to knowing what he'll tell Sherlock when he arrives.

Sherlock is nowhere to be seen when John finally unlocks the door to their flat. _Must be out,_ John thinks. He lets out a breath he doesn't realize he'd been holding and hangs his coat on the rack before making his way to the kitchen. He scrounges around for two clean mugs (and is more than a little triumphant when he finds them. That is no mean feat in a flat like this) and fills the kettle with water, then puts it on to boil. He's just beginning to let himself relax and think of that leftover Chinese food from last night when he hears it; footsteps, light and undoubtedly Sherlock's, crossing the floor behind him. He stiffens slightly, then turns around.

Sherlock stands in the entry-way between the kitchen and the living room. He looks even more unsure than he had earlier: crease between his eyes, slightly raised eyebrows, thin shoulders pulled up in a defensive posture that makes him seem years younger than he is. John knows, as soon as he lays eyes on him, that he is going to give in. Is going to help Sherlock in whatever experiment he needs help with─whether it involves kissing or not. But Sherlock doesn't need to know how easy John is to win over.

“How many times would I have to do it?” John asks. His voice is blanker than he'd intended, a side effect of trying to hide his nervousness.

Sherlock swallows, and his pale throat tugs. “Three times, as of right now. Once for raised blood pressure, once for lowered, and once for the gun thing.”

 _The gun thing. Informal wording. Must be more important to him than I thought._ “Fine.” John realizes that he's pulling at the cuff of his jumper and stops. “I'll do it.”

Sherlock smiles, and John feels his heart cramp. Sherlock doesn't do it very often (smile, that is) but when he does, it's full and gorgeous and _breathtaking_ , and John finds himself looking wildly around to see where the hell his heterosexuality had decided to run off to this time.

“Good. Yes.” Sherlock nods vigorously, still beaming. “I'll go get the sphygmomanometer. Have a seat, John.” He turns and practically bounds down the hallway. John hears his bedroom door shut with a bang.

John sighs (how many times had he sighed in total today? Twice? Twelve times?) and fixes himself a cuppa. Might as well enjoy delicious liquid sustenance in the interim, right? He makes his way to the living room and sits down in his chair as he waits for Sherlock to reappear.

He does, sphygmomanometer under one arm. He perches on the edge of John's chair and wraps the Velcro cuff around John's upper arm. “I'm sure I don't need to tell you how this works?” Sherlock says conversationally as the cuff begins to inflate.

“No,” John says shortly. Sherlock glances up at him from under thick eyelashes at the curtness of his tone but doesn't comment, for which John is grateful. He doesn't feel like explaining.

The machine lets out a beep and Sherlock eagerly reads the results before unstrapping John and leaping up to go type them into a document he has pulled up on his computer across the room. “Perfect,” Sherlock says, typing at an inhuman speed. “You are a very healthy man, John.”

John leans back in his chair and takes a sip of tea. “Thanks,” he says after a moment. There really doesn't seem to be much else to say. He watches his friend in the bluish glow of his laptop and tries his best to calm himself down. _Just three kisses,_ he thinks. _You've kissed loads of women─_ ah, but there is the keyword. _Women._ Not _men._ And certainly not _Sherlock._ Sherlock, who puts eyeballs in his tea and doesn't eat or sleep for days on end and plays the violin like he has some sort of personal vendetta against it half the time. Sherlock, who is the most beautiful, interesting, wonderful person that John has ever known─man or woman─and who, John is terrified to realize, he's really quite looking forward to snogging the hell out of, even if it _is_ just for an experiment─

“Are you ready?”

John jerks out of his reverie and lifts his eyes. Sherlock is before him, the very image of calm, and approaching at a speed that makes John want to tell him at once to slow down and hurry up. “As ready as I'll ever be,” John says, and stands too.

They meet halfway.

 _It's just an experiment._ John's breath comes in sharp knots as Sherlock slides a cool hand between the collar of John's coat and the flushed skin of his neck.

“So do we just... oh, god,” he murmurs as Sherlock leans forward and, so lightly that John would have thought it was an accident if the whole thing wasn't very, very real, brushes his soft lips against John's.

Any doubts that John might have had over whether or not this is a bad idea immediately dissolve the moment his flatmate's lips touch his own: this is a _terrible_ idea. His body acts without any prompting from his brain, one hand grabbing the smooth fabric of Sherlock's (ridiculously posh) shirt and one coming up to tangle in the nest of dark curls gracing Sherlock's head. John was right: they're just as silky soft as he'd imagined.

 _I'm just a test subject,_ he thinks with an ever-diminishing piece of his brain. _I'm just a test subject. I'm just a... a..._ he makes an embarrassing noise when Sherlock grips his waist tightly with the hand that isn't already cupping his neck and leans forward, catching himself before he stumbles back a step, heart racing. He needs to get control of himself; this isn't even as passionate a kiss as the one that girl (Margaret? Marie? Mary?) gave him last week. And besides─

 _Fuck,_ he thinks once, in resignation, as Sherlock lets his own tongue trace the curve of John's bottom lip. Immediately John grants him access, opening his lips in an accommodating way as his knees turn to liquid. Wave after wave of heat wash through him: he does stumble back now, but doesn't let go of Sherlock, taking the taller but slighter man with him a few steps and using the opportunity to deepen the kiss enough that this time it's Sherlock who lets out a soft little groan (a groan that sounds suspiciously like John's name). John would be smiling, if his lips weren't far more happily occupied. As it is, he settles for a short grunt of laughter as his tongue crashes with his friend's, and pulls hard enough on the handful of gorgeous curls he holds to make Sherlock repeat the sound.

Sherlock tears himself out of John's arms. (What a cliché. But it's true.) He backs away quickly enough that he tangles in his own feet, thin chest rising and falling jaggedly with open-mouthed pants, and stares, wild-eyed, at John.

John, whose arms fall, empty, at his sides. John, who doesn't remember what it feels like to breathe. John, who is physically restraining himself from tackling the fucking beautiful git to the floor and never letting him up again. He feels only a sliver of satisfaction when he notices the patches of scarlet blooming high on Sherlock's otherwise pale face.

“Uh,” Sherlock breathes. His long fingered hands are balled up into very tight fists against his thighs, shaking slightly. He lets his eyes flutter shut and takes several deep breaths, before opening them once more. “Um. Yes. Sphygmomanometer please, John.”

And that's that.

 

2.

John is reading in his bed a week later (some detective novel that he keeps finding discrepancies in that he certainly never would have before meeting Sherlock) when a long, thin, posh-arse shadow appears in his doorway. He looks up from the smooth pages of his book with resignation and takes in the image of Sherlock, draped dramatically in dark blue silk and frayed cotton pyjamas, sphygmomanometer held against his lower abdomen.

“Jesus Christ,” John says.

“For science, John,” Sherlock responds.

“Get over here,” John sighs, laying his book face down on the duvet next to him and motioning Sherlock over with one hand. He rolls up the sleeve of his t-shirt as Sherlock plops onto the mattress next to him and begins the process of taking John's blood pressure.

“Never told me what the results of the last test were,” John says offhandedly. He's attempting an air of forced casualness, because the racing of his heart is surely loud enough for Sherlock to hear it from where he's perched, and John thinks that maybe his tone will convince Sherlock that he's less affected than he is...

“Hm?” Sherlock hums slightly as the cuff inflates and he stares at the machine. “Oh. Unimportant until all data has been collected.”

“Of course,” John says. The machine beeps, and Sherlock makes a satisfied sound before unstrapping him. “Why do we need to do this again, exactly? Can't you gauge whether my blood pressure went up or down from the last time?”

Sherlock pins him with the look that he reserves for annoying cabbies and Anderson, exclusively, and John feels a bit miffed. “Obviously I need to test it more than once. Honestly, John,” he says.

“Honestly,” John echoes as Sherlock undoes the Velcro of the cuff and sets the whole blood pressure machine on the floor next to John's bed.

Sherlock straightens. His collar-bone is sticking out of the edge of his light blue shirt, pale and too prominent for a man his height.

Sherlock leans forward and kisses John. John kisses him back. Hard.

It goes on longer than it should have.

 

3.

“Give me your gun, John,” Sherlock pants as they run down yet another dimly lit alley in Whitechapel. They're hot in pursuit of a man who has stolen several thousand pounds right from under a prominent banker's nose and (foolishly) believes he can get away with it.

“Don't shoot that man, you idiot,” John gasps back as they thunder around the corner. The man in question appears, pace slowing─no doubt due to the two huge black duffel  bags hanging off his shoulders.

“For god's sake, John,” Sherlock says, and stops short so that John slams into his back with enough force to send them both stumbling forward. Sherlock turns swiftly, nicking the gun out of John's loose grip ( _damn him_ ) and shooting the escaping man in the foot. The man lets out a strangled yell and hits the pavement on his side, bags flying.

“Sherlock!” John yells angrily, already running to the prone figure to check for injuries. “You stupid buggering arse!” He falls to his knees next to the thief but quickly realizes that there's no blood. In fact, the bullet is wedged─very neatly─in the rubber sole of the man's trainers.

The man struggles to get up again, but John sits on him, and he falls still.

Sherlock strolls up, thumbs flying as he sends out a text. Without looking up at John he says, “Lestrade and the others should be here in about five minutes.” He clicks the phone off and at last glances down at John. “Leaving me plenty of time to kiss you.”

“Wait─what?─no─ _no_ , Sherlock, what the hell, I said _no,_ ” John says, shoving Sherlock away by the thin shoulders as he gets to his knees and wraps John tightly in his arms. “Do you realize how stupid of you that was? If you'd missed and shot him─an unarmed man─you'd be in loads of trouble─”

“You argument is invalid. I never miss,” Sherlock says simply. He ducks closer to John and manages to get a peck on the lips before John once more shoves him away.

“And another thing,” John adds, panting a little, because _here_? _Really?_   “I'm sitting on a criminal, do you really think now's the best time to─”

“Yes John, I really do,” Sherlock says, sounding annoyed. “I just shot a gun, so now I need to kiss you to compare results.”

“I'm not comfortable with you two snogging on top of me,” comes the muffled voice of their thief from underneath John.

“Shut up,” John and Sherlock chorus.

“Fine,” John says, more to get it over with than anything.

Sherlock smiles in a self-satisfied kind of way. Bloody arse. “You wasted two minutes of kissing time with all of your chatter, so this will have to be brief,” he says.

“Oh,” John says, because what else could he say other than _let's just run off and snog somewhere we won't be interrupted?_

Sherlock leans in.

 

4.

There is a bang, loud and staccato, and John knows what's going on before he even reaches the living room. Sherlock is standing on the table, his legs spread wide, the sumptuous weave of his black suit tight on shoulders and thighs, revolver pointed carelessly at the wall with one hand. When John enters he turns his head sharply, and something heated and pinioning in his eyes makes John stride across the room and pull the gun out of Sherlock's hand. He flips the safety and tosses the gun on the couch behind Sherlock, then grabs Sherlock by the wrist and pulls him off of the table. The man leaps down lightly and grabs the collar of John's shirt, pulling him close.

“Inconclusive evidence?” John breathes, his own hands assuming their positions: hair, neck.

Sherlock leans in, breaths long and warm against John's lips. “Yes. Just that. Inconclusive evidence. Must repeat experiment.”

“Well get on with it, then,” John growls, and is promptly (and viscerally) obeyed.

 

5.

“John. John, John... I... I have another kissing experiment,” Sherlock's words tumble over each other as soon as the cab they've just climbed into drives far enough away that Lestrade and Donovan can't see inside. He's sitting, body tipped slightly forward, every lean muscle taut with expectancy. His hands are hovering in the air, fingers flexing slightly, as if waiting to grab on to something.

“Right,” John says immediately. He practically tackles Sherlock, pushing him up against the corner of the cab as he throws one of his legs over Sherlock's longer ones and buries all ten fingers in that mess of beautiful, luscious curls... _Some self control might be nice,_ one half on John's brain says, but the other half immediately counters with a much stronger _shut the hell up,_ and off he goes.

God. _God_ , he loves these experiments.

 

+1.

Sherlock has to admit something, but it isn't a particularly _admirable_ something so, of course, he divulges it to the skull.

He makes sure John can't be bothered to hear before he does it, though. (Fact: John Watson will ignore almost everything if given a warm cuppa and yesterday's newspaper.) Waits until he's gone to his room for the night, and then waits some more, and then (finally) takes the skull down from the mantel and carries it over to the sofa, where he flops down on his back and perches the skull jauntily on his chest.

“I have been deceitful,” Sherlock begins. The skull rises and falls with his breath: a little parchment-colored boat bobbing on a flat sea. “And, worse than that, I've been deceitful to John, which I loathe doing. I just... I just wanted to kiss him very much, you see, and I knew that he would never do it because of any emotional prompting, so I knew that my only option was to make it look like I needed him to kiss me for experimental purposes.” Sherlock sighs and sits up, cradling the skull in his palms on top of his crossed legs. It's cold in 221B, and he curls his bare toes. “Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to stop. My last so-called experiment didn't even involve any actual science; he just looked so damned perfect at that crime scene that by the time we got a cab I could barely control myself.” The skull stares up at Sherlock with wide, blank sockets, and Sherlock sighs again. “I'm just glad John hasn't caught on yet.”

“And that would be where you're wrong.”

Sherlock jumps, the skull sliding out of his hands and rolling across the sofa and onto the floor with a clatter. He stands─Sherlock, not the skull─and faces John, his heart beating so hard that he presses a hand to his chest in an effort to keep the over-excited organ from bursting free.

“John,” he gasps, but his words die there, because the look that John is wearing on his face─intent and overwhelmed and amused and flushed and beautifully, breathtakingly hungry all at once─is turning Sherlock's whole body into a raging inferno that he can feel burning from the inside out.

John walks into the room steadily. Casually. Foot after foot. He's wearing a plaid pair of pyjama bottoms and a thin cotton t-shirt that's rucked up a little at the bottom and his hair is messy, too, and he's so close, so close, so close─

He stops inches away from Sherlock. There's an unbearably sexy sort of half-smile on his lips. “Just to be clear,” he murmurs, “this isn't for science.”

And John kisses him.

Sherlock immediately goes weak in the knees. (Just like every time before.) He wraps his arms tightly around John (decides to slide one hand up under John's shirt, and _this is a very good idea, yes, yes it is)_ and kisses back with everything that he has, and John walks him backwards, backwards, until his back comes up flat against the wall, and this is good, because if not for the support of the wall and John, Sherlock'd be a puddle on the floor, melted by the heat of his blogger─

John pulls away and Sherlock chases him with his lips, but John evades him long enough to whisper, “You're in love with me.”

“What gave it away?” Sherlock pants back between kisses. “Anyway, don't act smug, because you're obviously in love with me as well.”

John laughs a little, then says lightly “All true,” then kisses Sherlock on the neck, which makes Sherlock moan loudly, and neither of them speak (not in full sentences, that is) for a long, long while.

All in all, the experiment produces favorable results.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Also, since some interest has been expressed: if anyone would like to podfic/do fanart for/translate this work you're more than welcome to! Just make sure you give me credit and let me know! P.S. I'm on Twitter! Come chat [@unicornpoe](https://twitter.com/unicornpoe)


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